The results of a YouGov opinion poll, published in the Sunday Times on New Year's Eve, reveal what seems a strange national mood. Asked about their own lives, a high proportion of Britons give positive answers. Forty per cent said 2006 had been a good year for them personally, and only 24% said it had been a bad one. About 2007, as many as 63% were optimistic. Questions about the state of the nation, however, elicited consistently gloomy answers. Only 7% thought the past year a good one for Britain, and only 24% were optimistic about 2007. I wonder how much of the blame for Britons' negative image of their country lies with the media, and particularly the national press.

The effect is familiar to pollsters. Asked in general terms about the NHS or the schools, people often say both are in dire straits. Yet asked about the local school their children attend or about their own or a close relative's stay in hospital, the majority express complete satisfaction. Why? Pick up any national paper, but particularly the Mails, the Expresses, the Telegraphs, the Sun and the News of the World, and you find a country going to the dogs. By this, I do not mean that the papers highlight bad news - gales, transport disasters, murders, political blunders and so on - as they have always done, and rightly so, since nobody would be interested in lists of aeroplanes that took off and landed safely and on schedule. Nor do I mean that they report specific examples of incompetence and wickedness among those who hold power in both the public and private sectors. If anything, the papers unearth fewer such scandals than they used to. I mean that the papers' tone is one of vague, generalised grumpiness, similar to what you hear from tired and slightly inebriated old men in the corner of a pub. It is, they insist, dangerous to go out, particularly at night, because rapists, paedophiles, schizophrenics and knife-wielding youths lurk round every corner, and drunken yobs roam the streets. The country is overrun by eastern European migrants. Veiled and bearded Muslims are plotting deadly atrocities. Our children are sexmad drug addicts. Law-abiding motorists are in mortal peril from speed cameras and traffic wardens. The schools don't teach anybody to read, and an orangutan could pass an A-level. Go into hospital, and you will catch a deadly disease or, if you are old, possibly starve to death. There is little hard evidence to support any of these claims; I doubt they accord with the direct experiences of the majority of Britons. Yet if media consumers accept even half of them - and, though newspapers now have fewer readers, they still set the media agenda - that could easily account for the YouGov results. The press does not focus on specific faults in the way we are governed, or in the ways that, say, supermarkets and banks operate. These might be possible to rectify and would not, therefore, prompt a mood of complete gloom. Rather, the press suggests there is something hopelessly amiss, perhaps decadent, about the British in general.

Look back at the newspapers over the Christmas and new year period, supposedly a season of celebration and good cheer. The Daily Express repeatedly lamented that "political correctness" made it impossible to enjoy Christmas: offices were forbidden to put up decorations, school parties and carol services cancelled, and angels expunged from Christmas cards. The Daily Mail warned of a New Year's Eve of "unprecedented mayhem", caused by pubs and clubs being continuously open. Most papers reported that much of the country was taking at least a fortnight off work. A triumph for the family and a heartening sign of a better work-life balance?

No, "Britain's New Year lie-in" threatened the economy with ruin (though it has stubbornly prospered for more than a decade in the face of similar annual press warnings) and would leave us helpless against competition from India and China.

And just in case you thought of trying to get away from this misery, the Observer reported on Christmas Eve that "Islamic militant terrorists" were "aiming to cause maximum carnage during the holiday season", probably in the Channel Tunnel.

These reports suggest a country under siege, in the grip of crime and chaos. You would never believe, for example, that the level of terrorist incidents is lower than it has been since the 60s or that burglaries have fallen by 59% in a decade. Moreover, it is difficult to think of solutions to the social ailments that the media highlight; no conceivable government action could compel us all to return to work on December 27 and, if ministers tried anything of the sort, the newspapers would soon denounce them as killjoys.

The best press campaigns train their sights on particular problems which are within somebody's power to tackle. They have a reasonable chance of success. The most famous of all newspaper campaigns - the Sunday Times's demand for compensation for the victims of Thalidomide - met this criterion triumphantly. Whining about skiving workers or promiscuous teenagers doesn't. Nor does the redtops' favourite campaign to give parents the addresses of child sex offenders, since most child abuse is committed by parents and other close relatives in the first place; and nor, come to that, does the Independent on Sunday's strange campaign to make us all sit down together for Sunday lunch.

Contrast the papers' grim picture of the public domain with their coverage of the private domain on their feature and magazine pages. Holidays to remember, clothes to die for, recipes for heavenly meals, furnishings for the dream home, thrilling new computer games, diets and homeopathic remedies that promise perfect health and eternal youth - there is no private or family problem for which the papers don't have a convincing remedy. Your personal problems, unlike Britain's problems, can be dissolved at the click of a mouse or the purchase of a celebrity-endorsed diet plan. No wonder people think that, while the rest of the country goes to hell in a handcart, they can just shut the front door and handle anything that 2007 throws at them.

What happened to mystic Mogg?

Has William Rees-Mogg lost his nerve? The Times columnist's matchless predictions - last decade, for example, he regularly warned of a 1930s-style Great Depression and informed us that Colin Powell was a certainty to stand for US president and to win by a landslide - earned him the nickname "mystic Mogg". But the confidence seems to have deserted him and the crystal ball become blurry.

In the final week of 2006 and the early days of 2007, most Fleet Street writers could see the future clearly. Among Rees-Mogg's Times colleagues, Anatole Kaletsky predicted "even stronger" economic growth than expected, while Tim Hames assured us that Jack Straw will be Chancellor in a Brown government. The Independent was so sure that this will be the warmest year in history that it put the news on the front page. The Observer's Will Hutton saw mankind standing on "a glorious threshold", with immortality and universal happiness coming any day now.

All Rees-Mogg could manage was "the elections for the Scottish Parliament look very diffi cult for Labour" and "the Liberal Democrats need to gain council seats ... in the northern cities". Perhaps, after the death of Marmaduke Hussey - described by Rees-Mogg as a hero because, as chief executive, he once closed the Times and Sunday Times for nearly a year - the great seer is so depressed he has lost interest in the future.

Flintoff 's image test

It is a painful duty, but every British journalist must do it. Once a national hero is created, he or she must next be shamed. It is not enough for heroes simply to fall short of their previous high standards of performance; they should reveal deepseated weaknesses of character.

Mail journalists are masters of the technique and have unerringly identifi ed the true reasons for Andrew Flintoff 's disappointing form in Australia and thus for England's defeat.

The Daily Mail laid the foundations as long ago as September 2005 when, immediately after England's Ashes triumph, the press unanimously applauded the hero for getting incapably and publicly drunk. Flintoff, the Mail reported ominously, had bought a £1.5m house which "would not look out of place in ... Footballers' Wives"; indeed, a Premiership footballer lived nearby. Then, in early December last year, England had no sooner lost the fi rst Test than the Mail, highlighting the England captain's tattoos and trainers, growled that he "looks more like a supporter than an ambassador" and drew parallels with David Beckham.

Finally, with four Tests lost and a fifth defeat pending, the Mail on Sunday revealed clinching evidence of hubris. At his own expense, Flintoff had hired a "luxury Morpheus cruiser" for New Year's Eve so the players and their families could tour Sydney Harbour "swigging champagne".

Thus the Mail papers completed a perfectly- constructed classical drama. The ancient Greeks would have been proud of it.